[...]
I worked for another hour at the Bonaparte, before meeting up at the Flore with Bienenfeld — full of passion, alas! Goodbye, my love. I remember everything about you. I kiss you passionately.
Your charming Beaver
[Paris — Official Form]
21 February [1941]
My dear love
I was returning to the hotel with my heart full of you when I found your letter. Alas! my sweet little one, since 1 February they’ve returned all the letters I’d tried to write you. Send me as many as possible of these answer sheets — that’s all they’ll accept now. Your two last little letters had filled my heart with joy, and I’ve lived all month on the hope they gave me. This one leaves me more gloomy. How I long to see your friend and know something about you!3051 live — but I’m mutilated. I’ve almost finished my novel, and I think this second part’s very good. I read Hegel and listen to music. Bianca’s married and has left on her honeymoon with Lamblin: it’s only half working. C. Audry’s going to be a mother, Guille’s a father, I’ve seen Dullin — who’s taking up your case — and I’m going to see Toulouse again. Magnane has been published in the N.R.F. — his novel’s dreadful. The Boxer has written a poem about you, which is pitiful in more than one sense. He thinks like Toulouse, which is sad. I’ve dreamt hundreds of times that you were returning — I didn’t go away for the Shrovetide holiday, so that I could wait for you. I scan every street corner for you. I live only for the moment when I set eyes on you again. Goodbye, my love, sweet little beloved. I kiss you so passionately.
Your charming Beaver
[Paris — Official Form]
14 March [1941]
My dear love
I’m still living in expectation. I haven’t seen your friend yet. Paris hasn’t forgotten you — there are paragraphs about you here and there. La Gerbe was saying the other day: ‘We’re informed that M. Sartre is working on a novel called The Age of Reason — let’s hope he reaches it himself.’ Nothing new happens to me. Spring’s definitely here — I’ve changed my heavy shoes for lovely light ones. There has been a splendid moonlight these past few days, and I’ve strolled along Avenue de Maine with a great longing to relive such nights with you, my love. I’m working. I’ve finished everything and am polishing up the fine points — but what a need I have of your judgement! Alone in front of my text, I get to feel pretty sick of it in the long run. I’ve been to the theatre. I saw Britannicus, preceded by a shameless spoken prelude by Cocteau, but with Marais who was excellent.306 I saw La Main Passe!, a light comedy by Feydeau staged by Marchat and mildly funny. Wanda’s painting me. We have very polite relations at present, though she has given me a face shaped like a gourd. Kos. is playing half a giraffe at the Français in Obey’s Noë, and a 3rd tart in a play by Rouleau.307 Bost’s advancing in Gremillon’s favours, and I’m helping him work on scripts. Sorokine and I have had a screaming quarrel, in which I almost collapsed from fury — but in general it’s idyllic. I’m living gently in the midst of this whole little world — and waiting for you with passion, my love.308
Your charming Beaver
Envelope
KRIEGSGEFANGENENPOST — Prisoners of War
Sartre Jean-Paul
Prisoner number 10788
Lager-Bezeichnung: Stalag XII-D
Sender: S. de Beauvoir
Lycée C. Sée
11 Rue Léon Lhermitte
Footnotes
270Bost had been seriously wounded on 23 May and evacuated to the vicinity of Beaune, then on to Carpentras, near Avignon.
271Allusion to a game dating from the early years of their relationship (see The Prime of life, p. 19), in which Sartre would imitate the wretched-looking sea-elephant they had seen in a zoo at Vincennes — thus ridding himself of the contingency of a bad mood by assuming it, as a temporary disguise to be discarded at will.
272Le Matin (founded 1884) made its reputation as a newspaper of moral campaigns and noble causes, but was owned by an archetypal press baron himself involved in all kinds of shady deals. Paris Soir (founded 1931) was the first successful popular newspaper of the modern kind in France, combining photographs, sport, crime, advertising, etc. with some serious journalism.
273A cousin of the Morels.
274The Pastor and the Pastoress: nicknames for Bost’s parents.
275Mathieu: main character in Sartre’s The Age of Reason.
276Visited during a trip to Morocco in the summer of 1938 (see The Prime of Life, pp.333-4).
277As recounted in the letter of 11 July (morning) above, De Beauvoir had set out from La Pouèze by car; when the car ran out of petrol and she struck out on her own, her suitcase had remained with the car’s owners.
278Central Post Office.
279For the uncertainty concerning the number and fate of those of Sartre’s war diaries that had been lent to Bost, only to go astray after he was wounded and while he was being evacuated by train to Beaune, see Sartre, War Diaries, London 1984, p. xv. However, if what De Beauvoir reports here is true, then it must be concluded that the disappearance of any notebooks in Bost’s possession can only have occurred at some later date.
280Directed by Richard Oswald (1939).
281Probably The Wild Palms (1939).
282Alberto Giacometti, whose acquaintance De Beauvoir and Sartre were to make — precisely through Sorokine — only in the spring of 1941 (see The Prime of Life, pp.486-9).
283De Beauvoir had received some news (reassuring) of Sartre from a recently repatriated fellow-prisoner: see The Prime of Life, pp.466-8.
284He was completing his convalescence there: see The Prime of Life, p.466 (where De Beauvoir, of course, makes no mention of her visit).
(Address as letter 17 October 1940 above)
285De Beauvoir had been panic-stricken when she misinterpreted Sartre’s address ‘Kranken-Revier’ (infirmary) as meaning that he was sick and perhaps dying of typhus (see The Prime of Life, p.470), whereas he had taken up residence in the infirmary simply because it offered more comfortable accommodation.
286Another nickname for Marc Zuore.
287See Sartre, War Diaries, p.87: ‘I particularly detested Tennyson, because that English writer — of whom I hadn’t read a single line — had, according to reliable reports, lived in conformity with my sermons: he had written, and nothing had ever happened to him. I used to say furiously to the Beaver: “I certainly don’t want to have a life like Tennyson’s”.’
288Since Sartre’s second period of leave, that is to say.
289By Jean Anouilh.
290‘The Wall’ was one of the stories in the collection of the same name (Le Mur, 1939), entitled Intimacy in English translation. The Populists, in inter-war French culture, held that literature should be written for the people and about the people.
291 As De Beauvoir reported in her letter of 10 December, she had received nothing from Sartre since a note written on 26 October, until she now received his letter dated 10 December. It is not clear from the Lettres au Castor whether Sartre had been unable to write, or his letters had gone astray.
292The Sorbonne had been closed by the Germans following a student demonstration on the Champs-Élysées on 11 November 1940.
293Sartre had informed her that he was writing a play (Bariona) as a Christmas entertainment in his prison camp.
294By Sören Kierkegaard.
295Carnet de Bal: 1937 film directed by Julien Duvivier. Harry Baur (1880-1943) was one of the best known French actors of the 1930s.
296De Beauvoir was worried that Sartre might attempt to escape.
297By Molière (see The Prime of Life, p.475).
298Infirmary: see note 285 above.
299Arts et Metiers: the École Nationale des Arts et Metiers, in Boulevard de l’Hôpital near Place d’Italie.
300In October 1930, when De Beauvoir was thinking of finding a job in journalism in order to avoid having to teach in the provinces, she met a couple who might help her. The husband ??
? a sixty-year-old lycée headmaster — showed rather too lively an interest in her: ‘he would promise me a lot of useful introductions and talk to me about Life, with an eager emphasis on its more libidinous aspects’ (The Prime of Life, pp.52-3).
301 One of Sir Arthur Eddington’s popular works, probably The Nature of the Physical World (1935).
302Max Scheler (1874-1928), German philosopher, author of phenomenological and ethical works, often seen as one of the founders of existentialism.
303The evolution of De Beauvoir’s attitude to Hegel is explained in The Prime of Life, pp.568-9.
304Henri Bosco (1889-1976), regional novelist whose works were set in Provence.
305Sartre had announced that a medical orderly repatriated from his camp would be visiting De Beauvoir soon.
306In the production in question (at the Bouffes-Parisiens) of Racine’s Britannicus, Jean Marais played the part of Nero.
307Andre Obey’s Noe was written in 1931; Raymond Rouleau was an actor-director, who collaborated with Badel at the Theatre du Vieux Colombier.
308Sartre returned to Paris at the end of March 1941 (see The Prime of Life, pp.478 ff.).
LETTERS
JULY 1943 - FEBRUARY 1946
Before Liberation and After
1943
[Roanne, Loire]
Thursday 1 July [1943]
My dear little one
I’m horribly disappointed, because my bicycle hasn’t arrived yet. It really wasn’t worth the trouble of being in such a rush. I feel quite absurd to be kicking my heels in Roanne, at 8 in the morning, with nothing to do. It would be rather poetic, if only I didn’t dread having to stay here for two or three days, or a week ... or indefinitely. I’m writing to you from the little cafè where we ended up that morning before we went to see Abbe Perrin.309 The weather’s superb, and if I were only sure of having the bike at 4, I’d enjoy revisiting all those places where we roamed so painfully with our ailing bicycles. It’s all very familiar to me, even though the time of year’s quite different.
So I finished my move yesterday evening,310 then ate some fried potatoes before going off to catch my train. My dear little one, do at all costs reserve your seat, since those corridors are quite frightful! People were standing in the wc’s and on the steps; and at the stops women were in tears on the platform, because they couldn’t manage to get onto the train and had to pick up their bags and go home. You had to alight via the windows — it was dreadful. Luckily I had my seat. I slept badly, but the journey struck me as poetic because I saw myself on arrival mounting my bicycle and speeding off into the countryside. I was very much diverted because my three companions on the right, two men and a frightful woman, started chatting — after first taking out their books — and I caught the word ‘flies’: I thought how your damn play decidedly was pursuing me everywhere.311 They drew a parallel between The Stranger and Nausea312 — to Camus’s advantage — because they found Nausea boring in spite of fine passages. But then the moving spirit declared that there’d been good things in The Flies all the same; that it was odd it hadn’t been a hit; that he’d heard from Alquie you were disturbed because Valery didn’t like it; and that for his own part, despite everything, he couldn’t call it utterly without interest. After that they talked about something else. As for me, I read a bit of the Saroyan,313 which isn’t very good but quite agreeable, then tried to sleep. By 4.30 I was at Roanne. I dozed for three quarters of an hour in the waiting-room, and at dawn went off to collect the bike: no bike. Then I took a room and slept till 8, washed, and had a cup of white coffee before going back to the station: still no bike! I’ll have to go back at 4, 8 and 8.20 — it reminds me of the time those damned bicycles wouldn’t arrive at Pau.314 Luckily I’m certain of a room for this evening, as it’s apparently hard to find one. I bumped into a group of actors on tour, wandering sadly in search of lodgings without success. They struck me as poetic in this dismal province.
There. I’m going to write letters and read. I’ll tell you this evening whether the bike’s there or not. I’m hoping for lengthy news at Ambert — but I don’t feel at all separated from you. I was telling myself last night that I’ve never been so happy in my life as at this moment, and it’s yourself who’s my happiness. Goodbye, my very dear love.
Your charming Beaver
[...]
Monsieur Sartre
Poste Restante, Office 43
Rue Littré
Paris 6
[Thiers, Puy-de-Dôme]
Monday 5 July [1943]
My dear little one
I’m writing to you from the terrace of a superb restaurant in Thiers, on a charming square with a big view over the plain below me. This Thiers is a very agreeable town, and I’ve just done fifteen kilometers downhill to get here. Well, I joyfully took to my bicycle again yesterday morning. I rose at first light and by 6 was leaving Roanne. It would break my heart to lose the morning hours — or the evening ones either — since they’re the most agreeable; so I scarcely sleep more than seven hours each night, but take a siesta during those stupid, dull afternoon hours. I spent the morning winding along the gorges of the Loire, on a little road that was very stony but also very pretty. Then I took to the mountains again and stopped in a village, where I ate meat for the first time in a week: leg of lamb — preceded by a fine fish — and fine, plump potatoes, with a vanilla ice to finish off. There’s really no problem about food, and so far I’ve had no trouble finding a bed. But then I realized to my fury that Sor. had given me a rotten inner tube, which was totally deflated after 40 km. and impossible to blow up again. Luckily I had a spare one, though, which a mechanic put on for me and which seems all right. Couldn’t you perhaps get one in Paris? They cost 250 F. and it’s stupid to spoil our trip for that sum. If you could call in and ask the little garage-owner at Avenue du Pare Montsouris — on behalf of M. Francoeur315 — he has some at that price. Or else if Bost agreed to lend us one, it’s a ‘half-balloon’ we need and we’d send it back to him in September. It’s stupid if you have a breakdown. After lunch I took my siesta and read Julius Caesar — which wasn’t very interesting — on a little green with a big view over the plain. Then, at about 5, I left and climbed higher into the mountains. I wrote letters and had a decent dinner with a mutton chop in a little holiday village, then did another 15 km — the most agreeable of all — as the sun went down. After finding a room I went out into a field until dark, quite blissful, to contemplate the landscape. It’s a bit like a more mountainous version of the country round Usson — and very pretty.
This morning I was once again on the road by 6. Scaling on my way a large boulder carrying a direction-finder, I breakfasted off bread and saveloy, struggled over some steep passes, and stopped in a hamlet at the foot of a mountain I wanted to climb. For lunch I finished off my saveloy — a big lump — with bread and some sugar. I slept for two hours in a meadow, did 4 km. right to the foot of the mountain, but then a superb and terrifying storm broke — just as I was coming to a shed. Hail and lightning above a great landscape of mountains black with pines — it was very beautiful. In my shed I read the book about Charlemagne’s empire and by 5 it was fine again, the air full of rain smells. I wasn’t able to climb my mountain, but I was quite happy all the same and made my descent to this place through lovely scenery. I’m going to have dinner, then go to Noiretable to spend the night — unless the storm breaks out again, since the sky’s black. Then I’m not too sure what will become of me, since it seems to be hard to find a place to sleep here. I have only one problem and that’s the luggage, which falls off three times a day. Bring only what you can carry yourself, and please ask Bost to lend you something practical. My little one, every so often I tell myself how in ten days’ time I’ll be seeing your little back on the road in front of me, and it makes my heart burst with joy. My love, we’ll have a really good time. How I do love you.
Your charming Beaver
1944
[Morzine, Haute-Savoie]
Wednesday [20 January 1944]
Most dear little being
Here I am, dead beat and very happy. I already have a big day behind me and have been having a fantastically enjoyable time. I’ll tell you all about it in the proper order. First, on Monday I went to the radio316 — perhaps Kos. has told you about it — it was great fun seeing a broadcast, and the really interesting thing is that Jacques Armand has suggested I become a radio producer. He’ll teach me the job, and then I’ll produce my own programmes myself. That would surely bring in quite a bit, and if it takes a lot of time I’ll leave more of the other work to Bost. He was cool about Kos., because after seeing her as Electra he doesn’t regard her as exactly a cheerful actress.317 After that I had dinner with my mother, which passed off without incident, then went off to meet Bost at the station buffet. But then we had a few difficulties, because they didn’t accept skis on the train, so we had to register them; our tickets, however, were for Thonon while we wanted to send the skis to Cluses — which proved impossible. The end result is that they’re stuck at Annemasse, from where I hope they’ll send them on to us. Apart from that, we had a very good journey and I slept till morning. The weather was very grey during the last part of the journey, and also at Cluses where we got out — it looked really dismal. The train was full of the most opulent skiers: fur coats and sheepskin jackets. The first places to be booked in these particular trains are the sleeping berths, then the first-class seats, and lastly the third-class. So we had 4 moneybags with us, who were travelling third because there were no sleeping berths — they were revolting. The people in the coach were revolting too. It was a dreadful coach: we waited to get off from 12.30 to 1.30, and after that we had a 4-hour journey. But Bost had a seat — with me on his knees — and it was a front one and the road was pretty, so it wasn’t unpleasant. Especially as we had the pleasure of gradually seeing the sky turn clear blue. Then, in a village 5 km away from Morzine, we saw the first slopes with their skiers and were really greedy for the next day to come. At Morzine, we at once found beds at the Soleil Levant. It’s a decent hotel, the same type as those ones at Argentiéres or Megève, quite warm, and you can eat very decently there, with white coffee in the morning and English tea for 10 F. We settled ourselves in, then took a stroll round the village — which is tiny and absolutely empty. We bought a few cakes, which are neither very expensive nor very good; we shan’t be ruining ourselves on food, since the meals with a bit of extra bread will be plenty for us. After dinner I read La Société Française au XVIIIme for a while — it’s very enjoyable — and by 9 in the evening we were asleep in beautifully soft, warm beds.